Are You an Obstructive Sleep Apnea Sufferer?
Since the 1960’s a form of sleep apnea has been known to affect a significant number of people. It’s called Obstructive Sleep Apnea or OSA. When someone experiences an episode of this form of sleep-disordered breathing, their breathing just stops several times an hour while they sleep. The stoppages can be several seconds in length too. The odd thing is that while these stoppages can happen night after night for years, an OSA sufferer may never know.
A patient with OSA is never awakened from these breathing interruptions so they usually don’t know they exist. Instead, they wake up at their normal time and simply feel sluggish or sleepy – symptoms that can be attributed to many other things. After a time, an OSA patient learns to live with these symptoms and so they cope with them as a regular part of their lives.
Ignoring these symptoms though is not a good thing because the underlying apnea, if left untreated, can lead to more serious health problems. As a patient’s body and brain are robbed of oxygen night after night, some of the first areas impacted are their thinking or reasoning ability. But obstructive sleep apnea can affect several other parts of your biological and mental health as well and can, in fact, play a large role in the onset of a severe form of congestive heart failure known as cor pulmonale.
The reason people suffer from OSA is because they experience nightly obstructions in their airways while they sleep. In many cases the obstruction occurs because the throat’s soft muscle tissue relaxes onto itself shrinking the airway and in some cases temporarily blocking it. When this happens, breathing temporarily stops, oxygen stops travelling to the brain and rest is disturbed.
Not all people are susceptible to OSA, though it strikes both men and women. Sufferers are more likely to be those with poorer muscle tone generally and definitely poorer muscle tone specifically around the airways. This means that the obese and the elderly are much more likely to suffer from OSA than younger, more health people.
Obstructive sleep apnea is a treatable malady. In the case of the obese or unfit, there are life choices that can be made to reverse bad habits and regain muscle tone and general health. Additionally, there are other treatments available, the most effective of which is a treatment known as Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP).
A CPAP treatment is a night-long therapy that utilizes a CPAP machine and a CPAP nasal mask or full-face mask. The machine provides a consistent flow of pressurized air to the mask and that pressure opens and keeps open the airway all night long. The patient breathes normally, easily, and uninterrupted throughout their sleep cycle. It’s not unusual for a patient to experience their first good-night’s sleep in months the first time they take a CPAP treatment.
As sleep-disordered breathing modalities go, obstructive sleep apnea is the most common. And because it is so easy to miss or ignore, it can also lead to serious long-term consequences. If you think you may be suffering from OSA, see your doctor. If you think your sleep partner may be a victim of OSA, talk to them and get them to see their doctor. It’s better to be safe than sorry.
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